hiya, I just posted a reply on another thread on similar subject so have cut and pasted my post from that: " My DS (2 and a half now) was the same, and has very slowly expanded his list of what he will eat, is still reluctant to try new things but is alot better than at 16-24m when he literally seemed to stop eating. Any fuss or attemts to 'help' him eat resulted in complete meltdowns, he wanted to do it on his own and not be coerced. I had to force myself to calm down about it, kept a food diary of what he was eating so that I could see what was going down well and it did help, I was advised to look at his intake over a week rather than a day. Any tension was immediately picked up on and rewarded with the lips clamping shut and dinner ending!!
He always liked alot of milk though, so I started adding fruit smoothies to the lunchtime milk (sugar-free just fruit ones from asda) so that he got a portion of fruit in his drink, we still do that now ("milkshake please!") as he likes it. I stopped giving inbetween snacks for a while so he would be hungry at mealtimes. One snack that is good is the goodies oaty bars, plenty of goodness in them. It can take a few times of putting a new thing in front of him for him to try it (20 wasted fishfingers at least before he picked one up, now he likes them), so don't get disheartened - apparently this is quite normal. He would always spoonfeed himself weetabix no matter what, and porridge, he seemed to like how it stuck to the spoon when he was 'littler' and now he just likes it. Peanut butter is good on toast, as it has loads of the 'good fats' they need for growing, worth a try? mine took to that straight away surprisingly. Do you make tomato sauce for pasta? you can blend in a blender: red pepper, onion, carrot, small garlic clove; add this to the saucepan of spag bol type sauce or tinned tomatoes and I can almost guarantee you he won't notice it as these veg blend seamlessly into the taste of this sauce. I often add soft cheese to pasta sauces near the end of cooking, or a cheese and diced mushroom and onion sauce is good with pasta shapes too. will he eat mash with his fishfingers? if so (and its worth a few days of having a dollop on the plate as he might try it after a week or so!)! you can make a mash from several veg, potato/sweet potato/butternnut squash and swede goes down well here and then you get quite a bit of goodness into him in one meal. again, if he likes mash he might take to shepherds pie? mince and tomato and veg in that is all good stuff. + Baked beans actually count as one of your five-a-day and some kiddies love em! If he likes finger foods have you tried doing triangle soft wholemeal bread sarnies, like at a kids party - mine likes soft cheese, grated hard cheese and marmite, egg mayo, tuna mayo sometimes, mashed banana, even mashed banana and advocado. Mine likes a picnic lunch and a hot dinner like lasagne, its taken a while to get to that stage though so don't be too hard on yourself " in addition to that, I would say that I don't/didn't offer alternative meal options as I quickly noticed that he would hold off from eating a portion of shepherds pie or similar in the knowledge that he would get marmite toast or cheese sarnie instead!! clever little buggers arent they. so I only offered the one choice (same these days) and after a while he would eat some of it, then eventually more. We have a decent list of meals he likes, but he still wouldnt try something completely new and alien to him, i.e., if we are out or at a friend's house he still needs something quite familiar, I think alot of kids are like this, they like what they know - although I do know other peoples kids who are alot more adventurous with food ho hum :) as long as they're getting nutrition its absolutely fine - i.e., my HV said to me why are you worried that the only fruit he will eat is banana, raisins and fruit smoothies, theres loads of vitamins in all that! I think variety is more of an adult concern, mine will happily eat pasta on a daily basis. best wishes :)